If you are of a certain age (like me) you may remember when math was not a subject for girls. Rather it was a specialty of only some boys and girls were exempt from even trying to understand it. It was when I was in college and required to take Statistics that I realized that math is basically another language…and there is nothing exclusively male about it.
Math had been taught to me as problem- solving that had to be done in exact steps and in exact order. If I reached the correct answer in a different way, it was incorrect!
This is NOT the math that threads its way through The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa. Ogawa’s math unfolds in simple and profound ways. The reader comes to accept the belief that mathematics holds the secrets of the universe “copied from God’s notebook.” Math is the beautiful pattern infusing all of life…a universal force of nature.
Once aware, you begin to see math everywhere-not only in science and technology, but in music, art, rhythms of speech- even in the swirls and lines of objects from pieces of wood to heads of cauliflower.
Of course, the Professor’s devotion to math is deeper and more complicated. One chapter begins, “The Professor loved prime numbers more than anything in the world. “ Ogawa goes on …” At first, it was hard to see their appeal. They seemed so stubborn, resisting division by any number but one and themselves. Still, as we were swept up by the Professor’s enthusiasm, we gradually came to understand his devotion…”
I am still math-challenged, but I too gradually came to understand the Professor’s devotion as I read and re-read the book. And I look forward to learning more about math as our WestportREADS month continues.
On Thursday January 14 at 7:30 pm, Dr Bruce Bukiet will be at the Library to talk about math and its application to sports, especially baseball, which was, of course, the Professor’s second great love. Bukiet is Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and a man whose website attests to his belief that “A day without math is like a day without sunshine.”
